December 8, 2012
Saturday

The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn’t really over. . .
— Jennifer Egan, b. 1962
American fiction writer
from A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction

Last week I wrote about the problem we are having with the current occupants of a property that borders ours on the south. The tract is about eight acres. The back four, the part directly across from the large window where I have my C&C each morning, is undeveloped. It is landscaped nicely, planted in the kind of durable grass that serves as a play area, and it slopes down into a retention pond where the vegetation is a little wilder, but not unatrractive. When I first moved here in 1976, the whole tract was a field, planted in grasses that were cut periodically and baled for hay. In the early 1990s, a church congregation relocated from the city and built an octagonal structure that contains a sanctuary, a kitchen, and some meeting rooms. The parking lot is at the farthest end from our house, then the building, then the undeveloped portion. For various reasons having to do with church politics, congregational squabbles, and leadership by people who have sincerity but few practical skills in running  a business (you can’t just praise the Lord and help people through their emotional hard times all day long, you have to pay the bills as well), the group calling the facility home has changed hands four or five times.

The most recent occupants, an evangelical, fundamentalist group whose roots are in Nigeria, took possession of the property sometime in September. The former congregation had let the property decline almost into ruin. The new people worked hard over several weeks, in the evenings and on the weekends, to remedy the neglect, both inside and outside the building. Their work sessions were characterized by the ordinary sounds of lawn and garden tools in use, materials transferred into their large Dumpster, and the laughter of children playing tag or basketball.

It’s when their actual worship activities commenced that the trouble began. Their music practices on Friday nights and their services on Sunday morning, which begin at 9:00 and extend well into the afternoon, are punctuated, sometimes for long periods (ten minutes or more) by loud, booming, precussive thumping.

Efforts to communicate with them via their webstoe were unsuccessful (their email doesn’t work, and you have to use a web message script, which restricts the number of characters you can send). The pastor did call me once. The conversation was cordial, but nothing changed. Finally, last week, I wrote to the township commissioner who covers my neighborhood. I explained the history of the problem, copied for her the messages I had sent, and asked her if she had any suggestions about how to proceed.

She wrote back promptly, and I was grateful that her response was not something like, “Why can’t you just go out on Friday night?” She said she would talk to the township manager and the police chief. I knew that the township manager had just returned from a medical leave for some serious surgery. And although this is a quiet, low-crime community, it isn’t Mayberry. There had been an abduction/car-jacking at a large public facility nearby, and I figured our small but stalwart police force was pretty busy with beefing up security.

Yesterday afternoon I had a phone call from the township police officer to whom this matter had been assigned. Wow. We talked for a little while, and then we agreed that he would visit us in the evening during the time that music practice takes place.

The officer arrived in his full professional outfit, complete with a fully-stocked weapons belt. That was a little intimidating. And who hasn’t had this experience — when you take the mechanic out in your car, it won’t make the funny noise. There was music practice going on over there, but it was much less thumpy and boomy than it had been in all the weeks previous. It was less thumpy and intrusive, but still at a level high enough that we could hear it and feel it under our conversation and under the sound of the television turned to a comfortable volume.

“They’re very nice people over there,” he told us. “They brought us [evening patrol officers] some Thanksgiving dinner.” (Note to self: Make an extra tray of my cardamom rolls to drop off at the police station on my way to Faith with Friends on Thursday.) Trust me, there is no problem with the niceness of these people. Just their noisiness.

The officer left to visit the church. We could tell when he got there. The sound stopped. He returned about fifteen minutes later. He had persuaded them to relocate their amplified drums away from the window (it maginifes the thumping), and he gave them a copy of the ordinance that prohibits such sounds after 9:00 pm.

And we didn’t hear another thing all night.

I am hopeful, but only cautiously so. For now, though, thank you Susquehanna Township.